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Title: I just finished up a simple Hacker News extension for Google Chrome. It allows you to view the front-page stories as well as submit your current tab. Let me know what you think and I'd like to hear your ideas for future updates.<p>The source code can be found here: http://github.com/adamalbrecht/hacker-news-for-chrome
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: This is approximately my cost of living (I'm from a cheap country). I need to pay for food and rent. I can program well and relatively quickly. I'm not looking to build a monster business, I'm looking to cover my costs of living as efficiently as possible.<p>Suggestions?
Upvote: | 304 |
Title: Microbes isolated for a million years make quite an entrance.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: I see this phrase thrown around like a magic spell from time to time, a la "Put up a site about a profitable niche, do some basic SEO, and bam! presto! Instant $50/month!"<p>But what <i>is</i> "Basic SEO" to you? Blogging? Adwords? Paying dudes via MechTurk to write articles for you?<p>Googling "Basic SEO" brings you a few good articles, but a LOT of "buy our ebook" articles too. I just feel that if it were so basic, it'd be more common to find.<p>So what do you consider to be "Basic SEO", HN?
Upvote: | 208 |
Title: I find myself frequently bumping into comments (e.g., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1178984) indexed in Google and wanting to read the root submission. But I annoyingly have to click through a series of "parent" links to do so.<p>Could we get a "root parent" link there, in addition to the already-existing "parent" link?<p>EDIT: djg suggests "top" is a better name and it sounds good to me too.
Upvote: | 80 |
Title: Something I've been wondering about lately is the idea of school. And to be honest, I'm a bit lost right now.<p>Here is my situation. I am a senior in high school but go to the community college via the running start program here. I got accepted into the University of Washington and will be going there next year. And of course, I am interested in hacking and the start up culture. I've been reading Hacker News for quite a while now.<p>I'm confused about the whole purpose of school. To me, it seems that school is something one goes through to get a job and make money. But from what I've heard, to be successful I need to spend my time programming, and right now it feels as though I'm doing everything but that. I feel like I'm being dragged through this tedious system which will later prepare me for work at a company coding Blub, it's driving me nuts. Everyone around me keeps saying how important school is, but right now I'm having trouble seeing that. It's as if there are two paths that say they lead to the same thing, one of them being the right path while the other being the path we are supposed to believe is correct. At least that's what it feels like to me.<p>I have a lot of respect for everyone here at HN and I find many comments to be very valuable. I was hoping to gain a bit of insight from this great community.
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: I guess the question is more toward the Canadian HN entrepreneurs. Since Authorize.Net require you to have a merchant account in US, we, Canadians, can't use it. What are your choices for merchant account/payment gateway (in terms of building a web app)?
Upvote: | 67 |
Title: Unlimited Detail is a new technology for making realtime 3D graphics. Unlimited Detail is different from existing 3D graphics systems because it can process unlimited point cloud data in real time, giving the highest level of geometry ever seen.
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Just name it -- something you want to see solved but hasn't been yet. Political, technology, scientific...anything.<p>I hope to spark a discussion like the original version of this topic - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442571. More importantly, maybe someone will do something about your problem.
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Oh well.<p>Please don't write a motivational or demotivational post about how you didn't get into YC, how you're going to give up or soldier on, with or without them, how you didn't need their help anyway, etc.<p>That is all. Thanks. ;-)<p>PS: instead, simply refer to this one from last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351<p>PPS: No, notifications haven't gone yet, and a YC alum advises me that they will all go out in a single batch.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: I hope it doesn't come across at too corny, but I have to say, "thank you" because you guys on HN improved my work @ Mixergy tremendously.<p>In the early days, if my posts got on HN at all, they'd often have negative comments. I emailed the HN'ers who wrote those comments and I asked them how I could improve. Almost every single one gave me meaningful, useful feedback.<p>(That feedback is why I don't shout my intro, for example.)<p>Then, as I started improving, you guys voted up my work more often and helped me get real traffic, which led to some sponsorships.<p>Recently, I noticed that I have access to more of the entrepreneurs and investors that I want to interview because they tell me that they know my work from HN.<p>It takes me hours to research and put together an interview. The people on HN make it worth the work. Thank you.
Upvote: | 178 |
Title: I'm currently taking a class from Prof. Jennifer Aaker at Stanford GSB. She's known for research on happiness - quite a profound topic. Here are some findings I thought are interesting:<p>50% of it is determined by birt or genetics. Circumstances such as marital status, earnings, and looks determine 10%, and the remainder comes from intentional activities or things we can do to change our happiness level.<p>Researchers postulate that each individual has a "set point" for happiness, which is largely determined by birth and genes. Deviations from that point tend to be short-lived.<p>How does money affect happiness? Once people are free from deprivation, the tie between money and happiness begins to fray. There's generally positive correlation but money yields diminishing returns.<p>Middle-class and affluent people are often stuck on a "hedonic treadmill" as they sacrifice personal relationships for diminishing returns.<p>They why do people pursue wealth? Psychologists argue that they are seeking "positional advantage." Most people are happy with less money on one condition - "everyone else is also making less."<p>In contrast, traits such as self-confidence and energy correlated with happiness.<p>What can we do to be happier?<p>(1) Time shift: First how many hours of deep, hard thinking do you get done each day?<p>(2) Work on projects you LOVE (not like): It releases happiness in your brain! People become more effective when the brain releases endorphines!<p>(3) Reframe expectations: An example: http://bit.ly/LouisCK10 People take technology for granted today and forget about the very recent past. Lowering expectations brings happiness. Take yourself less seriously.<p>(4) Create a reward system: Rewards make people happy. Try to create rewards, even small ones.<p>(5) Carve out clear areas of incompetence: Claim areas of incompetence! Admit it.<p>(6) Cultivate emotion contagion<p>(7) Create sticky memories: the "who" and "what" are important. Research (in the US) has also found that morning and night memories are stickier, as well as Christmas - the most memorable holiday.
A few tips:
"Perceived" free time is important!
Social skills: Typically there are 8 close committed relationships. family, close friends, siblings, partners, etc.
Dancing: makes people happy!
Volunteering: People who report time and money report greater well-being!
Being Part of SOmething Bigger
Not money! you just need enough money to live happily. Research also found that spending money on your friends and people you care actually makes you happier.<p>(8) Improve sense of humor!<p>She also discussed the "Six Selves Model": friends, parent, partner, work, community/spirituality, and health, which are the foundations of personal happiness. Try to allocate time over these different areas. Although you can be very busy, identify "temporal sweetspots". Allocate quality attention to each spot, even if it's temporal. She further suggested listing favorite traditions to build habits.
Upvote: | 88 |
Title: I've noticed quite a trend of downvotes on well-composed comments over the last two months or so. It's disappointing.<p>I'm concerned that as it gains users, HN is acquiring an attribute common to other social news sites where users simply downvote a comment because they don't agree with it, or because it criticizes something that they favor or like. I believe that downvotes should only be used on content that does not generate interesting discussion, is spammy, or patently and generally offensive.<p>I've noticed that there is not much language addressing general appropriate voting behavior in the Guidelines (at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Is this something we want to address, or not?<p>I think a good way to help curb inappropriate downmodding is to invoke a small cost for each downvote. StackOverflow does this and it seems to work pretty well.<p>Has anyone else noticed this trend recently? If so, what are your feelings regarding it?
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: Alright, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the "I made ____ in ___ hours/days" posts. I am completely behind the "Look at this site I made", but the "in X hours" part confuses me.<p>1) Persistance is one of the most important traits for an entrepreneur. We're in an ADD society, and things do not happen overnight. It's easy to throw together a website, but it's more difficult to stick with it, refine it, get people using it, and most importantly, get them paying for it. These posts often strike me as demonstrating ADD, moreso than anything else.<p>2) It feels like misplaced gloating. I think it's great that you're smart, entrepreneurial, and able to create prototypes quickly. But it's really not worth gloating about how fast you can put up a prototype, most people on this message board could do the same if they weren't working on their real ventures. If you absolutely insist on gloating, it would be better to do so about how many millions of users you have, how many millions of dollars you made, or how many days you were able spent on a beach last year. If your weekend project can achieve high marks in any of those categories, then I'd definitely want to hear about it.<p>3) Is it an attempt to demonstrate intelligence/ability? In today's programming landscape, there are so many automated libraries and frameworks that it's pretty easy to put almost anything together (want to put up a site that links satellite images, recent macroeconomic trends, and real time XYZ events, no problem). Combining some subset of available frameworks and libraries doesn't demonstrate intelligence or ability, even if you can do it in a weekend.<p>4) If it is really that brilliant of an idea, don't rush it. Go in stealth most for at least an additional weekend, and thoroughly plot out how you'll turn this into a feasible product.<p>5) Is it an attempt to demonstrate how entrepreneurial you are? A better way to do that would be to pick one random idea, have the confidence that it's so good that you are willing to commit yourself to it 100%, pursue it regardless of what other people are telling you, and make it work.<p>6) Is it an attempt to get into YC? If this works, then maybe I'd understand it more. There seems to have been more of these over the past few weeks, so maybe that's what's going on. Although, it seems to me to make you appear more ADD than entrepreneurial.<p>I'm completely behind your entrepreneurial aspirations, but I'd rather you really commit yourself to something, work out the kinks, get users using it, then post "Look at my startup". Then I can have faith that you've really thought it through, and it's more worth HN's time to really understand what it is you're trying to do so that we can make some valuable recommendations or questions.
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: I often find myself with piles of work to do and many projects to complete but yet distracted by social media, investigating new technologies, and other less important tasks. I'm sure many of you are the same way so my question is how how do you buckle down and start working? And I don't mean simple technical solutions like resolving https://twitter.com to localhost but instead strengthening your mental resolve. What have you tried? What are your recommendations?
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: I've been thinking of creating a series of rails screen casts focused on teaching you how to build an application. I really love RailsCasts, but my focus would be to basically be teaching you by creating an application in every season. To give you a glimpse it'd be something like sitting next to a programmer building a rails application.<p>Basically, season one would be something like building a really powerful blog application, season two, a SaaS app with rails, etc...<p>Interested? Upvote or comment. I'm trying to figure out how many people would be interested...<p>Thanks!
Upvote: | 85 |
Title: To follow on from cdixon's recent submission (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190710), I suggest we put into practice the "opposite of secret" theory.<p>Feel free to add your own ideas and leave feedback on the others. Also if you see something that interests you, get in contact and make it happen!
Upvote: | 130 |
Title: Do you think a better language makes you more productive than a language with great libraries?<p>There's Arc. There's OCaml, Haskell and a plethora of so-called next generation languages. These languages are supposed to be far superior to today's measly languages like Java or C++, and in pg's own words: they're supposed to make you more productive, get work done quicker. (Quote from Revenge of the Nerds: "1 line of LISP replaces 20 lines of C")<p>But is that really true? From experience I can tell you the lack of libraries in these languages kills off almost any code size advantage you get from using them. So I ask you all, be honest to yourself; is using such a language worth it?<p>And one last thing. Is functional programming really better than imperative programming? All that brain-racking to implement a multi-level loop using recursion in ML? IMO, imperative programming cleanly maps out to the real world. The world is imperative! Things have state! We do not live in an imaginary fluffy world of mathematical elegance & correctness. Truth is it's so much more easier to think imperative.<p>So, Is functional programming really worth it?
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Daniel just wrote he got rejected and someone else chimed in they had been too, but were definitely not going to let it make a difference.<p>So, my question is what is the biggest success that YC missed out on, some group that pitched during one of the cycles and that was rejected, manned up and made it without the YC funding and the access to the network?
Upvote: | 80 |
Title: A small survey, please answer as many you want,<p>1) How long have you been working on your idea ?
2) Were you accepted in YC ?
3) Have you raised money from the VC ?
4) URL to your demo/company.
Upvote: | 82 |
Title: Amazon ec2 costs can grow very fast if you are not mindful of the Amazon ec2 billing structure. We came across the following ways to save money at our company.
Upvote: | 66 |
Title: I am in a financially secure position. I have no debt, I am single, no mortgage to pay, and no need to work (although I do it anyway because I enjoy it). I am not "super" wealthy either. Rather than having money sitting in the bank, I've decided to invest $250,000. $200,000 will go into vanilla/convserative investments. But with the remaining $50,000 I'd like to try something a bit more interesting. I have unlimited risk tolerance for the $50k, provided the investment has "home-run" type upside.<p>1. Excluding angel investing, what would you do?<p>2. Assume you have zero experience angel investing, but have a capable technical background. What do you do? How would you build an angel brand for yourself?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: Looks like news.ycombinator.com is rejecting all search engine robots with "User-Agent: * Disallow: /". This is unfortuante, I often do site: searches to find old threads here. esp since news.ycombinator.com doesn't have its own site search, this is the only way to find old threads.<p>pg, what's up?
Upvote: | 318 |
Title: Does it work for lets say earning $100-300 a month with light works over the nights and weekends?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: A benchmark of 14 different Python WSGI web servers.
Upvote: | 86 |
Title: Well, I am one, about to quit my job tomorrow and planning to go full time on my iPhone development company (www.meraiphone.com). Just wondering what's the startup-girl-scene is like.
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: Link to sign up: http://quora.com/hackernews<p>Quora is a question and answer site focused on getting really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that people are interested in.<p>The big idea is to try to get every question page to be the best possible resource for anyone who wants to know about the answer. One way to think about it is as a cache for the research that people compile by searching the web or asking others. The feeling you get when you see a Wikipedia article and you think "Oh, that's going to have all the information I want about that" is the feeling we want to create across a much broader space.<p>The best things you can do are asking and following questions you're interested in, answering other people's questions, and voting or commenting on answers.<p>Right now, you need to use your Facebook account to sign up. We might add other ways to join later on.<p>We're still in beta and are making a lot of changes and have a lot of work to do but wanted to get some feedback.<p>Thanks
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: I thought I'd start a "brag" thread. I know there are some really interesting and inspiring people here and I want to hear all the cool, unusual, unique things you have done.<p>Examples:<p><pre><code> * I've travelled to all 7 continents
* I've won an olympic gold medal
* I've built a start-up from scratch and sold to Google
* I invented a consumer electronic device that has sold 10M units
* I've produced a feature length motion picture [Insert Title]
* I had this ... funny life experience
* I went drinking with Vladimir Putin</code></pre>
Upvote: | 200 |
Title: The full press release is here:
http://www.claymath.org/poincare/millenniumPrizeFull.pdf
Upvote: | 77 |
Title: You can now get notified on Notifo whenever someone replies to a comment you've made on HN. Just put your Notifo username in the notifo field on your profile.<p>Note: you may get notified before the reply is actually visible, if the commenter has a nonzero number in the delay field in their profile. So if you don't see the reply, just wait a few minutes.
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: There seems to be a very serious wordpress.com exploit which allows 3rd party sites/domains to gather a hash code which can be used to login to an user's account. Here is how to reproduce,<p>1. Login to wordpress.com<p>2. Take a look at this page : http://www.sandaru1.com/wordpress_test.html (This page is just showing the hashcode/url, I'm not saving any hashcodes)<p>3. Open another browser (in an attacker's case, his/her browser) and paste the URL shown in the page<p>4. Goto wordpress.com on the new browser and you are logged in<p>The exploit itself seems to be too simple. Am I missing something here or is this a serious bug?<p>P.S - I emailed both Automattic support and Matt Mullenweg. I didn't get any response back.
Upvote: | 110 |
Title: I've got a web application with monthly subscription fees. What's the easiest way to implement monthly billing? Is there an app out there that handles that kind of stuff for you?<p>Side-question: what's the cheapest way? That is, requiring the lowest transaction fee.
Upvote: | 109 |
Title: So I have been given the opportunity to speak at the university I graduated from (Portland State University) about my experience starting Mugasha while I was an undergrad.<p>I thought I would get some of your thoughts on starting a business.<p>Here are few questions I plan on talking about.<p>- Why start your own business? Why start early?<p>- How to be a domain expert?<p>- How do you know if you have the right Idea?<p>- Why it will be the hardest thing you will ever do?<p>- How do you bootstrap?<p>- How do you find investors?
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: I'm genuinely shy.<p>I stopped playing the guitar because I was too shy to play in public. I couldn't even play for ONE other person. I wrote some songs and publicized them...in forums, to strangers, not to people I knew.<p>I quit blogging because I just wouldn't tell people that I had a blog. I think I'm kind of scared to expose my work or something.<p>Needless to say, if I had an app or even started a business, it'd be hell for me to advertise it. I really can't picture me trying to convince someone to use my product; if a cousin asked me what it does, I'd start to stutter.<p>This applies to live interactions, not stuff like email, forums or HN. I'd have no problem in showing you guys my work and asking for comments and reviews.<p>What can I do? I think starting a blog again and telling people about it would be a good way to start, because it'd expose my work without me feeling intimidated by the presence of someone else. Would you agree?
Upvote: | 72 |
Title: Hey there.<p>Firstly, thanks for joining our little corner of the web. It's great to have you here, and we look forward to getting to know you.<p>However, there's a culture here we'd like to keep, and some of you are unknowingly damaging it a little, and I'd like to point you in the right direction as it were.<p>I think you see HN as a mini version of reddit. Which in a way, it is. But it's a mini version of a tiny part of reddit. We don't really want stuff on politics or whatnot on here. We want things on code, on business and startups. Also, hacking things is good and post-worthy.<p>What isn't is...<p>"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."<p>From patio11: "We also discourage pithy one-liners, personal abuse (even witty personal abuse... although candidly speaking you're probably overestimating how witty you're being if you're thinking of fudging this one), memes, and the letters TL; DR."<p>I know the guidelines are hidden at the bottom, and so you probably didn't read them, but I just thought I'd bring this to your attention.<p>Kthxbai<p>EDIT 1: To clarify, it's not that I think HN is turning into Reddit, it's that some people (mostly new) seem to think it should. I respectfully disagree, and think it's quite alright without being reddit.<p>EDIT 2: Yes, I've read the guidelines. I'm not complaining that it's becoming reddit, it's that some users seem to think it should. See EDIT 1.<p>EDIT 3: Added patio11's points.
Upvote: | 147 |
Title: No tricks. Microsoft is giving away Windows Server 2008. And you can even redistribute the image.
Upvote: | 87 |
Title: So it's 2010. I know enough C to be able to read and patch small apps where I find bugs, but I'd like to sit down and properly learn the language, in a way that encourages neat, usable code for my colleagues, that meets whatever the current standards are for C and covers modern topics like threading. I'm planning on using this to develop Python modules or hack on small Unix tools.<p>I've previously read K and R and found it understandable but a little boring. I really like the Head First series (but alas they have no C book) or anything with lots of examples.<p>What's the best introduction to C book you'd recommend?<p>Edit: Thankyou to everyone who's responded.
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I'm looking to integrate something like Mixpanel to one of our Rails applications. Mixpanel looked good at first, but they don't allow importing historical data (which is important for us). Is there any other similar analytics service out there with similar features ?<p>As a last resort, I'm thinking of using R (http://www.r-project.org/) - is this a good idea ?<p>Thank you for any advice on this.
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: There have been a few "who's hiring?" threads in the past and I'm curious if those hiring would be interested in adding to another. I think the last one was up almost a month and a half ago, so I'm sure the job landscape has changed over that time.<p>On a completely self-plugging note, as of this past Monday, my company downsized so if anyone is need of a good web developer, drop me a line!
Upvote: | 154 |
Title: The full title of this post is "The Impact of SSDs on Database Performance and the Performance Paradox of Data Explodification" but I thought the first heading summed it up better.
Upvote: | 113 |
Title: Created by YC 2010 Alumni as a side project.
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: UPDATE: Corrected misleading headline from article. $722m to date, not per year. Average consultant earns $400k / year.
Upvote: | 83 |
Title: I'm launching an adwords campaign, and having very little success. Only two clicks to my site in three days. Obviously I need to change things, but it occurred to me that I have no idea where to focus my efforts.<p>Should I focus on more ad impressions (raise my CPC and add keywords), or should I focus on changing my ad text, to make better use of the page impressions I am getting?<p>How to decide? Ask HN. What is considered an acceptable ratio of ad impressions to clicks? The answer to that will tell me where I'm going wrong.
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: YUI3 is developing an 'apt-get' for extensions and web services.
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: I was wondering what books people could recommend that would be relevant to the HN community and aren't related to software?
Upvote: | 118 |
Title: I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive. You can see the site here:<p>http://reelroulette.net/<p>It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers. Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so far).<p>You can read more about the making of the site here:<p>http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/<p>The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30 hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.<p>I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it. It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.<p>Any feedback more than welcome. Thanks!
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I'm an undergraduate who happens to be taking a graduate seminar in Programming Languages. Recently, we read a paper on testing web applications, and the (perhaps cynical) notion among the grad. students was that "no one tests web apps," which I felt was wrong.<p>So to possibly vindicate myself, I'm curious as to how many here do test, and if so, how?<p>Edit: Thanks for the responses! To be more clear, we were discussing testing more along the lines of "finding bugs and vulnerabilities" and less along the lines of "usability."
Upvote: | 56 |
Title: I am working on a documentary on the "new" pursuit of happiness. The "old" pursuit of happiness and the American Dream seem to have gotten tangled in money and possessions, but there seems to be some movement toward a non-material, or less material, pursuit of happiness (i.e. The Small House Movement, downshifting, Slow Movement, neo-homesteaders, etc.)<p>No one really created The American Dream, but we inherited a national charter that promised us "inalienable rights" that included happiness. Somewhere along the line the American Dream has become associated with "a consumeristic nightmare" (to quote Vanity Fair writer David Camp http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 ).<p>But there are some- my husband being one- who would argue we're at a moment of change. Given the world's economic crisis, a heightened awareness of our earth, and a new post Baby Boom generation making their mark, have our national goals for happiness begun to change? Or at least for some people?<p>Since the HN audience is significantly ahead of the curve, and honest about what they like and strive for, I want to ask: what makes you happy? In the short-term (day to day stuff). And longer-term: what do you aim for in your own personal pursuit of happiness? How much of what makes you happy and what you wish can be bought?<p>I'm also looking for people who might be interested in becoming part of my documentary project. Or at least interested in being interviewed about your thoughts on happiness or how you live via video chat. For an idea of the format, see video I just shot with a Belgian friend on her happiness list: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/why-we-all-need-a-happiness-list/ (I will be adding more soon with video she is shooting with her handicam and emailing me via yousendit.com; I would love to have others follow suit if anyone is interested in showing off their town/home/garden/stuff/lack-of-stuff, etc).<p>And to get a better idea of what I'm talking about with these new American Dreamers, see my video start to the documentary http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/call-for-submissions-for-documentary-on-pursuit-happiness/<p>Either comment here, or you can email me directly at [email protected]<p>Thanks.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: There is a rather large missile rapidly approaching America's innovation culture. Predictably, it has been hurled in the most careless of manner by a group of uninformed politicians and their staffers in the form of Senator Dodd's sweeping Banking Bill. Putting aside the merits and thrust of the Bill itself, (which ostensibly seeks to regulate the banking industry), there are two provisions in it which, if not removed ASAP, will essentially wipe out a large chunk of one of America's engines of innovation- namely angel investing. These provisions will raise the bar on the definition of an 'accredited investor' from $1M in net worth or $250K in annual income to $2.3M in net worth or annual income of $450K! It will also hamstring angel investing by slapping any such investment with a 120 day SEC review.
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: If previous blog posts and memory serve me, today is a milestone day for patio11 (aka Patrick McKenzie) - his last day as a Japanese salaryman before stepping full time into his 'MicroISV on a Shoestring'.<p>There are others in the HN community that have been there before, or built much larger businesses, or taken the plunge without first having built a successful side project. But since patio11 is a valuable member on this site, and a contributor I greatly admire, I felt it was worth noting and creating a space for others who might also want to pass on their best wishes.<p>So Congrats Patrick. I wish you every success. If the adage 'Give and ye shall Receive' were ever to hold true, then you will be the recipient of much happiness.<p>(And if you don't know patio11, I recommend his blog http://www.kalzumeus.com/)
Upvote: | 400 |
Title: Read his previous posts to learn more about the project and the detection method he's testing against.
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: Hello HN. Would love to hear your thoughts.<p>Yesterday we launched a very light version of pick.im. It is a marketplace for freelancers. For clients it is a way to search for freelancers in their area, at their pricepoint. For freelancers it is portfolio management, lead generation and (eventually) contracting and payment services.<p>We are focusing the search to be local (Designers in Portland) and not on specific cost (a 'competitive' search yields the ~65% of the market) This is much different than many other sites that really focus on bidding to the lowest cost in the world. We are not that.<p>Our broad statement is: professional tools for freelancers. Our shorter motto is: celebrate freelance.<p>We are working to build a site that allows search on:
Type of Freelance
Availability
Cost
Recommendations / Connections (linkedin connection)<p>In the next few weeks we are adding a simple contracting and payment option, essentially adding a 'buy it now' button to a freelance portfolio.<p>If you freelance and want to sign up put 'HN' in the invite code: http://pick.im/request/invite
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I think we need to get a single source for all today's pratical jokes that are getting submitter to Hacker News. I thought we could use this post as a forum of sort. This will also allow for people to upvote their favorites and we can get a running tally of the best-of-the-best.<p>Thank you.
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: HN is clearly going downhill. A year ago there were no front-page stories I was uninterested in. Or if there were I don't remember them. Today I see several front-page stories that don't interest me! If people will just be considerate and only vote up stories that I like, we can save this site from its otherwise inevitable downfall. TIA!
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: For reasons beyond the scope of this question, I must move to the Salt Lake City area within the next 3 months<i></i>. I'm looking forward to this move, but it puts me in an interesting situation, and I feel the HN collective will have some interesting insight and advice to offer.<p>First, a little background about me so we have some context: I am not a US citizen. I will have a green card in about 18 months, but meanwhile if I work, the employer must sponsor me for a visa.<p>This makes me nearly unemployable. The number of employers willing to deal with the visa process is vanishingly small, consequently there are very few -- if any -- jobs available to me. An additional complication is that I am "too experienced" for many jobs. I have a Masters degree (Software Engineering) about 12 years experience working on commercial software products. In recent years my career has been focused on management/technical leadership roles. That's no accident. I wanted that experience because I have a strong entrepreneurial streak and want to involved in the business side of things. I love that stuff.<p>However, I'm also passionate about building web products. I code for fun. I'm a geek, and I get a kick out of building cool stuff. I have no interest in being a middle management drone. I'd much rather starve and build something cool with a group of passionate people. I think a lot of people on HN are like that.<p>I'm thinking my unemployable status might in fact be an opportunity. My wife will be making enough money that we can get by with just her salary. She is happy to support me if I decide to invest my time into building something that has the potential to be turned into a startup when I am legally permitted to.<p>I always have a few ideas that I'm thinking about, working on, etc and now is no exception. I'm thinking this might be an opportunity to iteratively build prototypes and get market/customer validation for something that I can then really launch once I have a green card.<p>My questions: Is this something that's viable to do, in your experience? I don't have a professional network in Utah, so at least initially I will be alone on this - and in fact will have to be, since I cannot legally start a business. Also, does anyone have any advice as to how I might build a professional network of like-minded people when I'm in a situation like this? I have the social side of things covered (I participate in a lot of outdoor sports).<p><i></i> I'm happy to elaborate further, I just wanted to keep this question short and to the point.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: Maybe an "unhide all" button in the event we hide something unintentionally?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Submitting April Fools stories is just not the Hacker News Way. They're not funny, and they're a waste of everybody's time.<p>Thanks in advance.
Upvote: | 222 |
Title: Kind of getting sick of all the articles "iPad being used as X" on HN and everywhere else. Not saying it's a bad device but I mean, come on...
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: Just one of many signs that say "Yes Martha, the internet really has changed a lot about our lives"
Upvote: | 118 |
Title: I'm having trouble finding a way of consuming food that has an optimal balance of being healthy, cheap, quick, and tasty. I don't want to eat ramen (or most processed foods), but I don't want to spend an hour every day preparing, cooking, and cleaning. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to share (tips, recipes, whatever). I'm a single grad student, but advice for others is also appreciated.<p>For example, I remember an HN submission where the writer talked about paying someone who lived nearby and cooked well to drop off leftovers most evenings. Someone else talked about preparing a whole bunch of meals the first weekend of the month then freezing them (this probably requires a second fridge). From the body building community I picked up the idea to drink a lot of milk, because it's a great source of cheap good calories. I'm not necessarily looking for actions so drastic and perhaps "gimmicky", simpler ideas would work just as well ("making such-and-such is really quick and makes a bunch of leftovers that taste just as good as the first time", etc.)
Upvote: | 133 |
Title: I'm looking for a scalable web hosting provider which is free or cheap at entry level, and which isn't a VPS (I don't want to bother with server maintenance). Google App Engine is the only one that comes to mind.<p>What big sites use Google App Engine? Have you tried it? Is it flexible enough to run big, serious projects on?
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: A greasemonkey script to hide all of the annoying iPad articles when viewing news.ycombinator.com. You can modify the regular expression in the script to hide other articles as well if you know regex.
Upvote: | 152 |
Title: Any good videos/books ?
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: We are expecting our first child in August and have seen a lot of adverts for cord blood banking - the idea is that the blood in your baby's umbilical cord contains stem cells that might be useful for curing diseases later in life and so you should bank the blood as a form of insurance. The ads and marketing literature are very compelling, but of course that's what they're designed for! We've done a little basic research, and it looks like not everyone agrees that banking cord blood is desirable (e.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood_bank). However, as my wife pointed out, while the organizations in that wikipedia article who
recommend against banking are the kinds of people who should know what's best for mothers and babies, they don't necessarily seem like the best people to judge the potential effectiveness of stem cell therapies.<p>I'm posting this in the hope that there are some biotech folks reading Hacker News who can cut through the marketing spin and give us a straight answer - would you do this yourself, for your own children?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: HN, I ask this question here as I'm unsure of where else to go with it. I'm sure a lot of people like myself are members (mid-20s, striving to be self-actualized and think about life goals and happiness, or went through this before) and I'm sure <i>someone</i> dealt with something similar. I have basically lost the motivation to do anything, in my professional and personal lives and am sure it's something akin to a quarter-life crisis.<p>More importantly, I have lost the ability to tell if and what I want anything from life. I have been a few years out of grad school; the train tracks of school/first job are fading. I have no idea where I want to live, no idea what I want to be doing, no idea where I want to be doing it and no idea what will actually make me happy. Or if I do know exactly where I want to live, I'm always terrified that I'll regret the move later.<p>This is affecting me emotionally, hurting my relationship with my long-term girlfriend (hopefully soon fiance), and is much more severe than what I've experienced before. I am going to make an apointment with a psychologist, but after a few unsuccessful attempts to appeal to parents and friends, I'm not sure what else who else to turn to or how to proceed.<p>Some people say this is what entering adulthood's like, but everyone around me seems to be perfectly fine.<p>Thank you in advance for any advice and I hope it helps someone else who's going through something similar.
Upvote: | 201 |
Title: The new iPhone Developer Program License Agreement states...<p>3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: There is an app that I would like to code up, but if the cost is not too prohibitive, I'd like to outsource it.<p>I searched the web for info on good iPhone dev shops and prices, but couldn't get good answers, so I thought I'd ask HN.<p>Of course, it all depends on the app. How complex, etc. Assume a moderate app, with, say, up to five different views, storing of some user data, and using the location framework.<p>Nothing too complicated. I think it might take me a month or more to code, but it should take a more experienced iPhone coder maybe two weeks.<p>Am I looking at $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, more?<p>Some info:<p>1) I don't want bottom-of-the-line developers. I don't mind paying extra for good developers<p>2) I don't mind paying up to several thousand dollars. My take is that if I can't make that money back from the app, I would prefer to have wasted money than 1 or 2 months of my life.<p>Besides the price, do you guys know of good iPhone dev shops? I take it that the standard procedure is to look on elance.com, odesk.com, etc, but I've never used them and I'm not sure how to use them to find a good developer.<p>I'm in the SF Bay Area, so a good local dev shop would be great, even though I wouldn't mind a dev shop from elsewhere.
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: I know it's only been 17 days since the last one (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215633) but the company I work for is awesome and has an opening, and it seemed pointless to post it to a dead discussion.
Upvote: | 97 |
Title: It would be interesting to know what percentage of the people in uproar about the new no-cross-compiling rules are actually developers for the platform (who are affected by the rules) and what percentage are developers of other platforms, or not developers at all?
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: I think something must be done about the banning system. Most of the people I've seen getting banned weren't posting especially high-quality posts, so I can understand the ban itself - but why ban them <i>silently</i>? I regularly see posts, sometimes obviously long and thoughtful ones, deleted instantly because a user was considered banned - and the user has no idea! Can't the ban be limited in time, or something be shown to the user? I think it's awful to make people waste their time on comments like this.<p>To show the problem concretely, in the past months, as I read HN I've been pasting in a text file the usernames of banned users that I saw posting in threads here and there. Here are a few examples:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomjen2<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=slavingia<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=access_denied<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fatdog789<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phil_collins<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howcool<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=numbchuckskills<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bugmenot<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=anonjon<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=robak<p>Just look at the last one. How much time has this person unknowingly spent on posts which all got instantly deleted?
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: Over the last few months, I've seen a lot of HN members talk about being contractors, and why - designing to bootstrap their business, building an iPhone practice, moving to China to work and live, etc.<p>I'm often on the other side of that transaction, where I need to hire contractors for one or more projects, and I'd like nothing more than to hire from this group of experts, but I don't remember to bookmark every talented and possibly hungry person. I'm sure there are many other people on both sides.<p>So here's a Google Spreadsheet for adding yourself and your expertise so that folks who need to hire have a quick way to find HN folks: include your contact info [if you want], etc.<p>Spreadsheet is at https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs3clVJYi0yYVBka181Z0ZKRW9kQ0E&hl=en, I promise to leave it there and hope that nobody's a jerk about it.<p>(If someone has already done this, by all means let me know or add to this thread - I just want the list, not the credit.)
Upvote: | 222 |
Title: I created a new website at:
http://hnhackers.com<p>that was inspired by this post
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262467<p>to search for all HN contractors for hire. I thought it would be useful to be able to filter for contractors by skills / bio / location vs using the google spreadsheet, but would love to get your thoughts on this.<p>Note that I've populated the database with the first 260sh rows from the spreadsheet, so I'll add the new folks in the morning if you're missing.<p>Let me know what you think!<p>PS. Here is the spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs3clVJYi0yYVBka181Z0ZKRW9kQ0E&hl=en
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: "We Shared A Bedroom Brother!"
Upvote: | 72 |
Title: My day job has me working on a project that has vast amounts of data available in tabular form, but no way to analyze the data except to search it and display it in more tables. Pages and pages of tables.<p>I'd love to build a way to query the data and display the results visually, and I'm looking for books that demonstrate various techniques for visualizing data that (in many cases) is quite complex. Right now, my experience doesn't really extend beyond basic pie/bar/scatter graphs.<p>I've heard amazing things about Tufte, but looking at the previews of his books on Amazon they seem mostly focused on artistic presentations of information - something a marketer or analyst would create manually, not dynamic charts generated from terabytes of data. Is that the case? Does it still have useful information for the sort of thing I'm doing, or can anyone recommend something more suitable?
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: I'm interested in techniques that can be used for deploying new versions of web applications with no perceived downtime for end users, without having to disable writes.<p>I think I know how to do this while disabling writes: run two copies of the database (one replicated from the other), disable writes at the application label, separate the slave and continue to serve reads from the master, upgrade the slave's schema, "activate" the slave (essentially telling it it's now a master), point a new instance of the application running the updated application code at it and switch the HTTP traffic over - then set the original master up as a slave to the new master and enable writes again.<p>First question: is this sane / best practice?<p>Second question: if I want to do this without disabling writes for the period of the upgrade, what are my options?<p>Plenty of sites seem to manage to deploy new features without noticeable periods of downtime or read-only mode, so presumably there are a bunch of patterns for dealing with this. Where can I learn about them?<p>To clarify: I'm talking about updates that include some kind of modification to the database schema.
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: A month or two ago, I read about about someone (maybe vibhavs?) giving away a lot of old programming books they were done with, and was impressed with their generosity. I've been working hard to live simpler.<p>I've got 3 extra external hard drives that are unused (but not in box) and I'm just not getting any use out of them. As pretty as they are, I know they never will from me due to my overabundance of space already. I want to give them to someone who needs them (well, probably 3 someones) and can give them a little more use than I. I don't want any money, I'll even cover shipping (in the US please). If you're thankful, or even if you're just reading this, consider doing a random act of kindness for a stranger you meet tomorrow. Pay for a coffee or buy a lunch, it'll change their day.<p>Details:
All HD's are identical.
1TB Western Digital Green Power @ 7200RPM in a Speed Metal copper-colored case (which you can see here: http://i.imgur.com/nzcE8.jpg).<p>I'm going to attempt to choose randomly provided there's enough interest. I haven't considered the format and I don't want to just do "first one to see it" but I'll do my best to be fair.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: We make fun of fictional Movie OS because it's "not realistic" (it's not), but haven't recognised that it fixes a problem we've not been dealing with adequately: creating intuitive software user experiences where actions result in transparently understood actions.<p>I argue that the requirements of Movie OS (that they must clearly convey critical plot information) produce clear lessons that we can learn from when we design user experiences. A dialog box with good copy and "Are you sure?" isn't good enough anymore.
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: We're looking for more Software Engineers and Test Engineers to help Red Gate grow into one of the greatest software companies in the world. We know there are lots of awesome people out there who may be bored or unhappy at work. We're going to make it easy for you to be happier - at Red Gate.<p>It's easy to apply. Just leave your details for either our Software Engineer or Test Engineer role.<p>We don't need your CV or a covering letter at this stage.
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: Hey gang,<p>It seems that fewer and fewer discussion threads are prefaced with "Ask HN." I'm not sure if it was ever a formal rule, but I find it much easier to parse through the headlines when "Ask HN" clearly marks all discussion-only items, while its absence indicates a news item.<p>Are other people feeling the same way?<p>If so, how do we encourage this practice to continue?
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: Edit: Apparently it was 5 thousand, not 10.
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Bloomberg is reporting that Google is in talks to buy ITA Software, in Kendall Sq. Cambridge. The company makes travel management software and is one of the largest Lisp shops out there.<p>If GOOG buys them, will they force a rewrite in Python? I'm under the impression that ITA funds a lot of development/creation of tools for Common Lisp, so what impact might that have on the Lisp ecosystem?
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: I'm building a new SaaS web app and looking for inspiration on UI design.<p>Can you name some web apps that you find have a really great UI/UX ? Is there any website that showcases such web apps ?<p>Some web apps that come to my mind: 37signals.com's apps, Mint.com, FreshBooks.com<p>Thanks HN !
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: April 20, 2010<p>Resignation<p>Jason Calacanis at his finest.<p>I should note, that instead of responding, he instead removed my email account. Real pro of him. Good thing I forwarded it to myself first :P<p>Begin forwarded message:<p>---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Evan Culver <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:53 PM
Subject: Re: Resignation
To: [email protected]<p>Really?<p>What is your deal? I will ultimately <i>have</i> to come back to Mahalo to pick up my things. Why so rash, what is your rationale? This seems really unprofessional and when other developers and employees see this, it just makes them want to leave ASAP. Is it really that big of a deal that people find better things for them than Mahalo?<p>On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:19 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
Evan,
Don't come back to the office, do not email the team list.<p>Elliot will send you paperwork tomorrow. Today was your last day.<p>Good luck being employee 4,367 at a dying company.<p>Horribly disappointed in you.<p>J<p>Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile<p>From: Evan Culver <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:48:37 -0700
To: Jason Calacanis<[email protected]>; Jacob Burch<[email protected]>; Jeff Ammons<[email protected]>
Subject: Resignation<p>Hey guys,<p>This isn't an easy email to write, but as the subject suggests, this email is to inform you of my resignation from Mahalo effective in 2 weeks. An amazing opportunity came out of nowhere that I just couldn't say no to. I'll be writing code as a UI engineer at <redacted> and contributing to the open-source <redacted> project on a full-time basis. <redacted><p>I've never worked with such a great team and learned so much in such a short period of time. I owe all of it to the opportunity you've given me, Jason and I thank you immensely for that. Jeff and Jacob, you guys are amazingly brave for tackling such a great undertaking. I'm impressed you do it with seemingly such ease. Many people would fail quickly in your shoes and I applaud you for your leadership in such a fast-paced environment and against such great odds.<p>I certainly won't be going far (<redacted>), so I hope to continue a lasting relationship and hope that we all can work together sometime in the future.<p>Thanks again,
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: When it finally loads, the style and images are missing. Is it just me?
Upvote: | 72 |
Title: iPhone hacker and Dev-Team member Planetbeing just managed to port Google's Android Mobile OS to the iPhone.
Upvote: | 494 |
Title: I just need a break from the daily startup froth.<p>I'm not asking for an Erlang Bomb of the front page, I'm just asking for more geeky articles to be posted on a more regular basis. :)
Upvote: | 112 |
Title: It just doesn't seem like Zuckerberg is going to let up until all of our personal info, connections, interests, etc. are being sold to the highest bidder. So today, I quit. It's really not that bad. Just 2 clicks, and then 14 days without a login attempt. http://bit.ly/chsPFo I'm curious if anybody else on HN has quit and why.
Upvote: | 78 |
Title: I hope a less evil alternative emerges shortly, because it's already starting to get ridiculous even just a couple days after being introduced.
Upvote: | 73 |
Title: I'm looking forward to build my next web app soon and this time, I thought I'd give a try to a fully featured JS UI library instead of reinventing the wheel. I haven't quite followed JS trends for a while, so I'd like to get some advice from this community.<p>So far, I'm considering:<p>- jQuery UI: has been there for a while, great community and tons of plugins but it's still very low level.<p>- ExtJS: great UI but smaller community and the dual license scares me (I'm not sure I can afford the commercial license yet).<p>- SproutCore: seems really great and love the UI, but writing all my back-end in JS kind of scares me.<p>- Cappuccino: same as above.<p>So, what JS UI framework do you like best ?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: I just rewrote the code that generates the threads page to be faster. It used to be slow the first time you called it after a restart because it had to load lot of items into memory. Now items aren't loaded till the moment they're needed. This also makes it possible to show an unlimited number of threads.
Upvote: | 132 |
Title: I've been thinking about how much VM's have changed the way I work now, esp. how I setup my dev environment and the kind of hardware I run.<p>A few years back I switched to running my VisualStudio Windows install on a VM;I originally started on Parallels then switched to VMWare, and then recently switched back to Parallels (it just runs Win7 way way faster on my rig at least). I love the ease of moving to a new machine (just copy the vm), or even backing up my windows dev environment (just copy the 45gig file to my Synology NAS). It's also nice if you need to temporarily move your Dev environment to another machine (again, just dump the vm onto an external drive and you can even run it off that if you need too).<p>I was wondering how prevalent using VM's in this manner is. I seem to run into a lot of developers that think running a VM is much slower than an actual machine, and I guess it depends on your rig. I run a original Mac Pro tower with dual 2.6 core 2 duo procs + 12 gigs of ram; I can give Win7 4gigs of ram and allocate one of my cores to it and with that setup, Win7 + VS2008 smokes. It's honestly the fasest 'Windows machine' I've ever worked on. An added bonus to running like this is my email, music, IM and torrent clients are all running on the host so when Windows needs to reboot, I can keep working on some emails or updating my project plan, make a skype call, etc.<p>So how about it guys, do others run a VM type rig now or is it still predominantly just running a dedicated box for your main dev env?
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: Is there a way on HN to undo an accidental downvote? I feel bad; the comment had a score of 1 and now it is 0.
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: Do you check your phone too much? HN? Digg? Your email?<p>Are there things you really need to do rather than sit here and read HN?<p>What are you doing to deal with this?
Upvote: | 121 |
Title: Thought it would be amusing to take a trip down memory lane. I'd forgotten that we used to be "Startup News". Standout items for me:<p>- DropBox soliciting early feedback
- PG's business plan for ViaWeb
- Even then people were complaining about YC News addiction :)<p>Other frontpage editions here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com
Upvote: | 152 |
Title: I say less PowerPoint, more Latex.
Upvote: | 115 |
Title: The title says it all. It's one of the things I've been meaning to do, but never quite did. Any suggestions? I'm a TextMate power user currently.
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: Premise: this story is in part my fault too, but I will leave it here to warn other people on this subject: bootstrapping a startup while employed.<p>I worked in a consulting company in my country of origin and I was bootstrapping a startup in the meanwhile. A few weeks ago I moved to another job in another country. Now I have to close my startup because my employer does not allow it.<p>There are posts like this one http://blog.asmartbear.com/working-startup.html that tell you that usually things go well in this regard. While I don't doubt it, it wasn't my case. If you want to start a startup while employed, be very careful on this matter.<p>Actually everything seemed ok with this at first. I was hired in my current position because of my startup (I have an iPhone developer position here and the only iPhone development I ever made was in my startup) and during the interview I was asked if I wanted to continue to keep my startup after switching job. I answered yes to that question and there wasn't any issue about it.<p>I received my contract just a few days before leaving my country and there was a non competitive clause on it. Nothing strange, only a clause stating I can't compete with my employer while I am employed and I was in no way competing. So everything looked fine to me.<p>But when I got here I discovered that I'm not allowed to do any development out of the company, for myself or for anyone else, in any form (paid or free, open source or not), even if it is not competing in any way with this company. This is because they think that this would take my focus from my current job and since they give me a good salary and enough interesting challenges in my job, I don't need anything else (these are exactly their words).<p>I think this is very stupid and inconsistent. Stupid because I can just find any other passion that can take my focus from my job, or just get drunk every night (they actually encourage parties and drinking!). Inconsistent because they hire people that did extra projects out of their previous jobs. Then, when you are here, they forbid it. I think that as hackers you can imagine all the other flaws in this way of thinking and why it actually hurts all their company (which is mainly made of developers).<p>Let me tell you that it really hurts to close a startup and to give up all your work not because it failed but just because someone compels you to do so. Not because I was getting some big money from it (actually I still had to break even) but just because I did it for passion. I share the fault because I didn't ask to make everything clear before coming here, but given the premises everything seemed ok to me and I really wanted to leave my country so I overlooked this matter.<p>Actually I'm not in the position to challenge this decision and I can't just switch to another job, so for now I have to suck it and stop everything. As soon as I will be in a better position I will start looking for a job with better conditions for me (actually this is a very good job, but I really can't stand this stupid rule that controls what I can do with my spare time).<p>I just wanted to warn you. I hope that this will be useful for somebody.
Upvote: | 116 |
Title: I posted a blog entry of mine yesterday. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295462) I had exhausted my research options so the post was me asking for help.<p>Less than twenty-four hours after submitting it to HN -- on a post that got no up-votes or comments -- I had several people contact me with suggestions, tangential ideas, and even a PDF copy of a presentation made three days ago that talked about EXACTLY what I was mentioning.<p>HN might have more noise these days, but the signal is still strong.<p>Thanks, HN.
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: Having gone from a regular job to self-employment and now looking at moving back to a regular job, I've gotten a surprising amount of disappointment from my entrepreneurial buddies when I tell them I'm thinking about opting out.<p>What I was expecting was for them to ask about what I'm thinking about doing, what I've learned about myself, why I'm going to make that move. Instead, I'm getting an unspoken but almost palpable sense of disappointment and disinterest. It's the equivalent of telling someone you've converted to a wacko religion or that you've decided to betray your country or something.<p>I'm comfortable and confident in my decision, whatever it ultimately is, but it's got me wondering if some of the rah-rah about start-up culture and entrepreneurship hasn't sunk in a little too deeply to the point where you are either entrepreneurial or a waste of space.<p>You see bloggers of all shapes and sizes and of every level of experience casually disparage those who are merely employed, especially if they work at large companies or, worse still, academia or the government.<p>My sense for a long time now has been that there is an imbalanced representation of the realities, challenges, and suitability for entrepreneurship in the broader web. There's the sense of, "If you're smart enough, not a sheep, and hard working, you should be building your own business," but that's neither realistic nor even desirable for most people if they are able to get a clear picture of all of their options and what the trade-offs really are like.<p>Should there be more articles about why NOT to be an entrepreneur or about how to find a great fit with a standard job?<p>For everything we read about start-ups, it's amazing there's anyone left to work for them.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: When looking for talented engineers I know of no other community with a higher signal/noise ratio than HN (well maybe Stackoverflow?).<p>I also know of no project to work on that is like Facebook Photos. The team is about the size of an angel funded startup, yet the scale of the fbPhotos is larger than any other app (Facebook or not) that I know of. By almost any metric it's an order of magnitude larger than any other photo sharing website.<p>=====Why?===== You'll work on hard problems at a huge scale. Expect to be responsible for mission critical features that will touch hundreds of millions of people. You'll be deploying code your first week here. I'm not kidding. This isn't HR-speak.<p>Client-side image editing algorithms, third-party API integration, data processing & warehousing, facial recognition, hi-res uploads, image matching[1], ... there are plenty of hard problems to solve.<p>I can promise you that it won't be easy, but it will be rewarding.<p>=====Interested?===== Don't email recruiting, I'll refer you internally [2]. Find my Facebook email in my profile. Use it to email me 3 sentences. One should be why you're excited about photos (or hard problems). Another should describe a cool project you've worked on. Links/examples of deployed code is best. The last sentence should be why you're going to pass Facebook's engineering interviews [3].<p>Hesitating? Go ahead and send that email. It might just be the best decision you make today.<p>---<p>1. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=robust+image+hashing - does that excite you?<p>2. Internal referrals are given priority. Also, there is a referral bonus. Once you complete Bootcamp and join the photos team I will give 50% to you and 50% to the photos team (for trips, cool toys, etc).<p>3. I don't have the authority to bypass the standard interview process. There will be lots of algorithm questions (sorting / tree traversals, etc.) http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Facebook-Engineering-Interview-Questions
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